comparisons

Therapeutic alliance is often highlighted in studies looking at treatment effectiveness, both in and beyond the realm of eating disorder therapy. Evidently, there are a number of factors that can impact how well we get along with our therapists, ranging from disagreements with the course of treatment or type of therapy to a simple, unnamable dislike for the person. But what about their appearance? What kind of impact could a therapist’s body size have on the therapy relationship?

Rance, Clarke & Moller (2014) sought out to investigate this issue, looking specifically at how clients evaluate therapists’ body size and speculate on their relationship with food, with an eye to determine what impact this might have on the therapeutic process.

I was immediately drawn to this study when I was browsing the latest literature; I wondered why this hadn’t been studied before. In some ways it seems obvious; … Continue reading →

Definitioner

generalizable (generalisation)

an inference made from a sample (i.e., results of a study) to a population (8)

effectiveness

the extent to which a specific intervention, when used under ordinary circumstances, does what it is intended to do; clinical trials that assess effectiveness are sometimes called pragmatic or management trials (2)

sample

a subgroup selected from a larger group of potential subjects (population) (8)

thematic analysis (content analysis)

is a form of analysis that counts and reports the frequency of concepts/words/behaviours held within the data; the researcher develops brief descriptions of the themes and meanings, called codes; similar codes may be grouped together to form categories (16)